Sunday, March 24, 2013

Part 24 - O Lovely Bakery

After a
short ride down the canyon road, we arrived in town, and Molly Ann dropped me
off at the bakery, but not before giving me her cell phone number. I
thanked her again for her kindness, and walked the few steps to the bakery’s
entrance.

The
building had a smidgen of Bavarian architectural flair to it, as evidenced by the
symmetrical curved slates in the railings surrounding the outdoor seating area.
As I climbed the steps to the outdoor porch, I found a number of other
hikers sitting at the tables enjoying their sticky purchases. Most of
them I had met before and could remember all of their names; there was Rum
Monkey from Canada, Hummingbird, Clair and Doodles, Frosty and Anna.
Atlas and Peter Pan were in town, but I didn’t run into them, and it’s at
this point that I pass them and never see them again

.

I found
an empty place at one of the tables and sat my pack down beside it, then went
into the bakery and ordered several scrumptious-looking items. Out on the
porch, I enjoyed small talk with the other hikers as I consumed my pastries and
container of milk. Not content with what I had just eaten, and knowing it
would be a long time before I came across another bakery, I went back for
seconds, this time ordering different items than what I had eaten the first
time. This is indeed the fun part of hiking the trail.

Even
though I had Molly Ann’s cell phone number, I chose not to call her; instead, I
walked to the edge of the road leading out of town and stuck out my thumb in
the time-honored manner of soliciting a ride. Within a few minutes, a
vehicle stopped and offered me and two others a ride back to the trailhead
put-in.

All told,
my foray into Wrightwood and back was less than an hour, about the same time I
would have taken had I stopped for lunch on the trail. As I continued on
up the trail, I was still trying to process my encounter with Molly Ann and
what exactly her compassionate service meant to me, and more so, how I had been
affected by it.

Leaving
Highway 2, the trail began a steady upward climb of Mount Baden-Powell, so
named after the founder of the Boy Scouts. It started at about the
seventy-two-hundred-foot level and continued until it reached the spur trail to
the summit of Mount Baden-Powell at 9,245 feet. I was alone as I began
the ascent, but it mattered not; company was not important to me, as I always
had my inner thoughts to entertain me. I knew from studying my maps that
there were forty switchbacks to traverse before arriving at the spur trail
leading to the summit of Baden-Powell.

To ease
the drudgery of the climb, I concentrated hard on trying to remember the
details of one of my favorite science fiction stories my father had written in
the early 1950s. It was simply called "The School", and it was
the third story in a trilogy set, the names of the other two being "Trade
Secret" and "Noise Level".